Modern Adventure with Luis Vargas

Everett Potter
, ContributorExploring the world for 3 decades and countingOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Jakob Owens

Modern Adventure

Modern Adventure is a new company that aims to command a particularly sweet spot of travel, a place where adventure meets curated experiences on expert-led trips. Those experts might be brand-name chefs or celebrity fitness trainers who take you on a perfectly planned week in an extraordinary destination. You eat the best food, you meet the locals, you explore the most coveted aspects of a given destination and you return changed in one way or another. What's not to like?

One of Modern Adventure’s trips is led by chefJoshua McFadden, owner of Portland, Oregon restaurantAva Gene’s, who will lead a small group through Rome, Tuscany, and Florence. ChefAlison Roman, author of the cookbookDining In, will take Modern Adventure travelers to Vietnam. If fitness rather than food is your thing, Lacey Stone, a fitness guru known for Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian, will take a group to the Greek islands of Santorini, Folegandros, and Milos, a female-only boot camp filled with swimming, hiking and stand-up paddle boarding. Rajasthan, Bhutan and Japan are coming next winter.

The company was founded by Luis Vargas, former President of The Clymb and a veteran of REI Adventures. Vargas brings energy, drive and a singular vision to adventure travel. I've known Luis for years through the adventure travel community and I caught up with him recently to get him to shed some light on the Portland, Oregon-based Modern Adventure.

Modern Adventure

Luis Vargas. Founder and CEO of Modern Adventure, sitting on one of the many iconic and characterful VW Bugs found in Mexico City.

Luis, there are many competitors in the realm of curated experiential travel. What distinguishes Modern Adventure’s approach?

Our true north is working with people who we deeply admire and respect. People and brands who are passion driven and at the top of their craft, or on their way there. We seek to celebrate, amplify and shine a light on what they do and why they do it. We find these partners to be curious, creative, interesting and interested. Some are exploring the idea of going from success to significance, and how to make a difference. This gives us a POV around experiences that is singular to who we are working with, and our own deep experience, and relationships around the globe. We celebrate the idea of the polymath and look to explore and celebrate the intersections of art, culture, food, technology, music, design, fashion...all of the things. We think that it's an amazing time to be alive and want to bring unbridled joy, curiosity and optimism to what we do, and why we do it.

Modern Adventure

Rajasthan

In your mission statement, you say that you’d like Modern Adventure to be “the world’s premiere community for curated experiential travel.” What do you mean by community?

Community implies a shared sense of purpose and values for us, our partners and our travelers. Our vision has us being a community of Modern Adventurists who deeply value the access and experiences that the ecosystem provides and the potential for impact it can have. We are planning on providing meaningful ways for our travelers to connect both on and off trip and also clearly articulate and demonstrate the way that we are using travel as a force for good. It's aspirational right now, but we see a path, and we are committed.

Modern Adventure

Bhutan

What’s your own background and entry point into the world of adventure travel?

I became an adventure travel guide in my early 20’s and knew early on that I had found my calling. Today, I’ve spent over 15 years in travel, building or helping scale, experiential travel business for some of the world’s most iconic brands. My purpose is to inspire, and enable, people to discover themselves and the world around them with the belief that travel can be a force for transformation. The context and empathy that travel provides is needed more than ever and helps create an understanding that as people, our hopes and our dreams, are so much more similar, than different.

Modern Adventure

Lacey Stone

You’ve connected with a couple of experts for your first trips, including the Portland, Oregon chef Joshua McFadden and fitness guru Lacey Stone. Is that the approach going forth – having high level expert-led trips?

We think these types of experiences are a fun, and rich way to see the world, near or far from home. Group travel gets a bad name. We’ve seen firsthand, for over a decade, the magic that can happen, the meaningful relationships that can be built, when a like-spirited group comes together for a shared experience. It’s alchemy, and the potential is astounding. Of course, as with most things, there’s a time and place for many types of travel. We do believe, however, that this offers a particularly fun and fulfilling framework for exceptional experiences. Having an "Expert" or what we call a Tastemaker on a trip gives us the opportunity to look through a lens and a passion set and see a place and people through a unique lens. It's really compelling and provides for some experiences that simply couldn't happen any other way.

Modern Adventure

Kayaking in Greece

Does Modern Adventure offers its own support team on the ground?

We do, every Modern Adventure has one of our own hired and trained guides. They are the connective tissue, concierge and leader of every exceptional experience. Of course, we partner with local experts and operators to ensure that we are in the very best of care in every corner of the world. We are very proud and inspired by our global network of inbound operators, these are artisans of travel, that have dedicated their lives to bringing to life their chosen corner of the world in singular and fundamentally intimate ways.

Modern Adventure

Diving in Greece

You say that you “want to inspire travel that serves as force for good.” Can you say more about that?

There is so much here. Travel is the largest transfer of wealth from the developed world to the developing. When done well it can help preserve a place and a people, and when done badly, it can decimate, ruin and corrupt. That's a big deal. At Modern Adventure, we are committed to the former. Apart from making thoughtful decisions around where, when, with, who and with how many, we know we have a unique opportunity as a purveyor of transformational experiences. Meaning, we can enable context-shifting and positive, behavior-changing, learning and development. We're increasingly working with more influential partners and that presents compelling opportunities to make a bigger difference across all vectors. Fundamentally, travel has the potential to be transformative, restorative and the only thing we can buy that makes us richer. We aim to put these things into the realm of possible. Of course, it’s up to each of us to take the 1st step in. Once we do, the world, at least for moments, is boundless, and we are rarely the same.

Modern Adventure

In the Greek Isles

What should we expect down the line – a handful of carefully curated trips each year? Or do you have more extensive plans?

We have extensive plans and see Modern Adventure being a premiere destination for those seeking an exceptional travel experience. But we’d rather show, than tell. Stay tuned.